Starring:
Date: February 14, 2016
Summary:
After the last incident, Hige had taken Kenji to the hospital for Kenta to look at. What they found was quite unexpected.
Poster's note: foul language filtered in obvious places.
"Memories Long Forgotten - Unraveling Mind"
Konoha Hospital
It hadn't taken long to reach the hospital and as much as he'd like to just abandon this pain in the ass outside he figures he should actually take him in. He walks through the door and glances to Konsho, who takes off immediately and practically breaks the door down going into Kenta's office. "Kenta! We need help! Something happened to Kenji!" The ever happy pup doesn't sound too happy at the moment. Hige meanwhile takes Kenji into the first empty room he finds and flops him onto the cot rather unceremoniously.
Its terribly difficult to do paperwork when someone's trying to knock down your door. Kenta hurriedly gets out of his chair and jogs to the door to yank it open. "Umm… what's wrong, Konsho? Who's this Kenji and what happened?" he asks in a voice full of concern. It's not normal that people come to his office like this, especially not Konsho. This type of thing happens mostly when Genin mess up a spar and one of them get seriously injured… "Calm down! No, wait. Umm… just show me what's going on." Kenta exits his office and closes the door behind him.
While Kenji remained motionless and unresponsive, his mind was fully awake. Inside his head he roamed through darkness, confused as to what was going on. The last thing he remembers was confronting Hige, though it felt like he was more an observer from afar than anything. So how did he end up here? The teenaged Uchiha continues to roam the vast darkness before he starts wondering if he had been caught in some kind of powerful genjutsu. Placing his hands together in a releasing seal, he shouts 'Kai', trying to release himself from whatever this was, though nothing seemed to work.
Konsho leads Kenta right to the room Hige had taken Kenji too. Hige had left the door open so that they'd be fairly easy to find, though Konsho had no trouble with that anyways thanks to his nose. "Hey Kenta," Hige says, glancing over his shoulder towards the door and seeming surprisingly unconcerned as compared to Konsho. "Kenji here was causing some trouble, then decided to attack me. I roughed him up a little," yep he's got some injuries, though nothing even close to fatal, "and then he screamed and put his hands on his head before he passed out. I didn't hurt him that bad so I think something else is going on." A quick report so Kenta knew what was going on. "I brought him right here." And thanks to carry him over his shoulder Kenji had the nerve to get blood on Hige's clothes. Sigh.
Between calm Hige and panicking Konsho, Kenta's likely to trust Konsho's reactions a little more. It doesn't mean that Kenta himself is going to start barking at shadows though. The medic-nin steps into the room, brushes pass Hige and immediately steps up to Kenji's side. "His visible injuries definitely should cause him to pass out like this. But if he was getting pain in his head, it could be a problem inside of it. I hope there's no hemorrhaging there." Kenta starts to probe Kenji's scalp carefully with his fingers to check for tell tale signs of serious head injuries. Whether he finds anything or not, he proceeds to perform other checks, both physical like pupil dilation and with the diagnostic jutsu.
Kenji continues to walk through the darkness, starting to wonder if he is even moving anywhere or making any progress as everything is the exact same, just darkness. The only thing he has to go on is that his legs are actually moving, he is actually walking forward. After what seems like an eternity, something in the distance seems to break the veil of darkness, though he was too far away to see what it was just yet. At least he had a goal to stride towards. As for his body, while beaten up a good amount by Hige, it would show no signs of why he fell unconscious and why he remained so no matter what outside stimuli was tried. His eyes showed signs of movement, perhaps due to a state of REM sleep or something else, but when checked, the Sharingan resided within each, something that should not be possible while unconscious.
Hige moves away the cot when Kenta comes over and he walks over to start looking through the closet in the room, wondering idly if anyone might have left a shirt there on accident he could swap out for. Hrm. "I didn't even hurt him that bad. I could've done a lot worse, but the point was to teach him a lesson, not kill him. He's very slowly walking down the Zori path and I plan to nip that in the bud."
"No, it's definitely not due to the physical injuries," Kenta says with a puzzled tone of voice. He keeps his right hand resting on Kenji's forehead and closes his eyes to concentrate. "There's something odd here…" The medic-nin's voice slowly trails off. He sends chakra pulses of renewed strength into Kenji's body to try to isolate the cause of the oddity that he's feeling. Definitely not physical. Maybe something with the chakra network? Kenta begins to explore that section by section. "Umm… Some of his chakra is constantly being drained by something. Or maybe directed somewhere. It almost feel like the way extra chakra I produce is drained into my storage scene, but…" Kenta's brows furrow. "Not a storage seal. There's definitely a seal on this boy. It's recently broken too, which might be related to this. I need to figure out what it does."
As Kenji wanders towards the odd fixture in the distance, the darkness begins to waver ever so slightly. As Kenta's chakra pulses reach his mind, the darkness surrounding the teen reacts, though nothing changes inside his mind. He continues to wander towards the fixture, though ever more cautiously than before. On the outside, as Kenta finds the presence of the seal, or whatever it was, Kenji's eyelids suddenly open, his Sharingan within his eyes burning a brighter red color as the eyes begin to look around, as if getting their bearings of the situation and where they were. Nothing is spoken by the boy, which makes the situation a bit creepy, but even more so by the fact that, as they fall upon Hige and Kenta, the tomoe within the doujutsu begin to spin, casting an illusion upon everyone within the room.
If this illusion is successful, the two will experience their own personal hell. Whatever recent situations or failings on their part will be revisited and heightened in a negative way, (perhaps Hige and his brother or Zori, and Kenta with a recent failure or personal struggle).
Internally, Kenji finds himself suddenly lying on a bed, surrounded by complete darkness. He recognized this bed, it was his own back in his house. Influenced by this dream-like perception, he feels it is time to get up and get started on his day. As he rises, so does Kenji in the real world. The purpose of this illusion is meant to detain everyone within the room as the body of Kenji, looking wide awake yet moving in a very slow and strange way, tries to rise from the bed and exit the room.
Hige is poking through various items in the closet when Konsho barks a warning. Hige turns quickly, ready to move and expecting some kind of physical attack. Instead he sees Kenji's eyes open and immediately feels the genjutsu. A low growl escapes as he uses a claw to draw a thin line along his arm, giving him a focus. Feral eyes remain on Kenji as he moves towards him quickly, intending to punch him right in the nose. Apparently he wasn't as out as Hige thought!
"This is some kind of suppression seal that was broken. Still having trouble seeing what it does due to the damage to the configurations, but the suppression affects the mind. I think I sense a second seal here and it's whole. Give me a second to dig deeper. I wonder…" Kenta's caught by surprise when he feels sudden changes in both Kenji's physical form and chakra network. His eyes pop open just in time to see Kenji's sharingan activate. At the same time, Kenta feels invasion chakra reach into his own body, so he reflexively disrupts chakra flow inside his own network to prevent the genjutsu from taking hold.
"Wait!" Kenta exclaims when Hige moves to punch Kenji in the face. "Kenji's not really awake! His body is moving of its own accord or being controlled somehow! Don't hurt him too badly!" the medic-nin exclaims as he moves forward to try to help. Must keep Hige from killing the boy -and- keep Kenji from leaving.
Kenji's sleep-walking state continues to move towards the door, and within the darkness the boy reaches out towards the door in his room in order to head down the hall towards breakfast that he could almost smell waiting for him. Was that his father calling him tell him to hurry up? Suddenly he is thrown backwards as, on the outside, Hige punches him in the nose and causes him to fall down against the wall. His body stands back up, his nose bleeding rather profusely as it makes its way to the door again. His head turns towards the obstacle blocking his path, Hige, that shouldn't-be-glowing-but-is sharingan a sign of whatever was going on. In his head, Kenji picks himself back up, groaning a bit and unsure of what exactly happened. Did he trip? He felt a bit of exhaustion as whatever it is continues to draw more necessary chakra in order to get the body out of the room. As for Hige, Kenji's body would lift its hand towards Hige in a clutching motion from across the room and Hige would begin to feel asphyxiated, as if Kenji's hand was actually around his neck. Kenta was, interestingly enough, left alone this time.
"Not really awake? What the thread are you talking about Kenta?" Hige just glares at Kenji, standing between him and the door and part of him feels like punching the Uchiha again. However Kenta seems to think it's not going to help. Not that it's stopped him before…but for now he'll listen. When he feels the genjutsu again trying to close around him he digs a claw into his palm, drawing a trickle of blood as he continues to stare at Kenji. And then Konsho comes in, trying to ram into Kenji from the side. If that works, he'll sit on him!
Something's definitely wrong with this scene. "Not awake in his mind's not present. Umm… something took over his chakra network. I think it was that second seal I sensed. He's basically sleepwalking now or being moved around like a puppet." Kenta starts making hand seals when it appears that even a punch to the face isn't going to stop Kenji. "Hige, please lock the door. I'm going to try to take control of Kenji's body. Otherwise, he's probably just going to keep fighting us, even if Konsho unwinds on him. I can't analysize any of the seals on him if he's flailing around," the young man says in a tight voice. He activates his jutsu and reaches out with the most advance version of the Yamanaka jutsu that he knows into Kenji's body. "Stop moving now!"
Kenji's body is, yet again, unable or unwilling to move as Konsho slams into him and then sits on him. He struggles a bit, but only trying to get up from the ground, not acknowledging the heavy mutt on him. Within his mind, Kenji is suddenly pinned to the ground, wondering what was going on. His breakfast was waiting, his father was growing impatient. He had to get up and get there before his family cleaned the table.
Kenta's intrusion into Kenji's mind would place him within the same darkness, though nowhere near Kenji. Behind Kenta would be glowing words upon what looked like ripped sealing paper, the word 'Suppress' would be able to be made out through the tears. The interesting part was the letters beneath the sealing paper. While the words on the seal glowed a dull blue, the words underneath were a bright red. The letters C T R L could be seen through the tears in the other seal.
Hige mutters to himself, glancing down at the flailing Kenji and then reaching out to scratch Konsho behind the ears while the worried pup sets his whole weight on the Uchiha to keep him down. Hige turns to lock the door, then goes back to the closet. "Let me know if you need me to do anything else," he calls over his shoulder as he goes back to poking around the closet for something to wear.
"Umm… ok…" The response comes from Kenji and in Kenji's voice, since Kenta had hijacked his patient's body for the moment. The medic-nin's own body is slumped against the wall. While he can make the boy move without entering fully, it's going to prove too useful to be able to see what's inside Kenji's head as well and work from the inside out. Kenta doesn't bother asking Konsho to get up. Kenji's fine where he is on the ground.
With things calmer, Kenta withdraws some of his attention from his surroundings and concentrate fully on what's happening within his patient. "These seals," he murmurs softly inside Kenji's mind. The medic-nin steps up to inspect both the ripped 'Suppression' seal and the glowing 'C T R L' underneath. He starts reading the character arrays on the top most seal.
The suppression seal is old, looking to be simply worn down and ripped on its own to indicate that it was probably put there quite awhile ago. The worn out paper flaps float in the air as if an imaginary breeze was flowing through the area. Suddenly, another piece of the seal falls, revealing the letter N above the T. As more of the secondary seal is revealed, the area around the seal and Kenta immediately drops in temperature about 20 degrees, and the silence within the blackness begins to break as voices, murmurs, within the black veil can be heard.
On the outside, Kenji seems to have a bit more control as he is able to start trying to push the dog off him with small amounts of progress.
Konsho just repositions himself when Kenji tries to push him off, sitting more fully on the Uchiha while Hige continues to dig through the clothes. "Wait a minute," Hige mutters, pulling out a shirt and letting it unfold. "This is mine!" How had…oh, that's right. From one of the many times they'd taken his clothes to try and make him stay in the hospital. They'd eventually given that up when he proved he'd just leave naked. He pulls off the bloody shirt, going to the sink to get a part of it wet to wipe some blood off his face and arms before donning the new/old shirt.
Kenta senses the movements of Kenji's body as a strain on his own jutsu. The young man grunts softly as he tries to reassert greater control to stop it. "Hige, Konsho… he's resisting my possession. Stay alert, just in case," Kenta informs the two others in the hospital room with them through Kenji's mouth. Then, he returns his attention to the seals.
"A suppression seal planted over a seal that obviously takes over a target's body," Kenta murmurs. He squints at the extra bit of red lettering that the flaking off of the suppression seal reveals. "The mind too, since it's forcing Kenji's consciousness elsewhere. Umm… Genjutsu? Or maybe a direct mental technique planted into the seal." He carefully reaches forward to touch the glowing red letters.
As soon as Kenta touches the red letters, the rest of the remaining suppression seal blows apart, revealing the complete sinister red lettering of CONTROL. Along with the full revelation of the seal, chakra begins pouring out of the scraps of the SUPPRESS seal. Not just any chakra, but images, hundreds of images, like Kenta was watching various short clips in a movie. These images were the stuff of nightmares, wild warped creatures, beats and phantoms, blood saturating rooms and giant battles of shadowy figures, ripping each other apart. These were images, nightmares trapped within the SUPPRESS seal that had plagued Kenji in the past, so much so that this seal had to be placed there, but what was the reason for the other seal?
Kenta wouldn't get much time to think as the full revelation of the CONTROL seal sent a burst of gathered chakra through his body that expelled Kenta as the Kenji in the real world screamed and clutched at his head again before seemingly going unconscious like he was upon arrival, though underneath a dog now.
Hige heads over towards Kenji when Kenta mentions that he's resisting the switch. Hmm. He crouches down next to Kenji curiously, then blinks in surprise when he screams again. Konsho jumps off of him, instantly worried he accidently squished the poor Uchiha. But then Hige sees he seems to be unconscious again and he waves Konsho off, the pup going over instead to check on Kenta while Hige picks up Kenji with a soft grunt and carries him back to the bed. "What exactly did you do?"
Kenta groans softly as he awakens in his own body. That wasn't a comfortable way to end the jutsu that he was using. The medic-nin rubs at his head as he slowly gets to his feet. "I was inside him for a second. The first seal is completely gone now except for some shreds. Not really your fault either, since it was already old and worn down. That second seal in there… I still need to figure out what it does."
Kenta grimly walks over and sinks to his knees next to Kenji. He places a hand on a spot that Konsho's not covering. At least with Kenji fully unconscious now, in all the ways it matters, maybe he'll be able to work out the function of the red seal. He starts to sink his attention deep into the boy again. "Hige, can you go ask a nurse to grab Kenji's medical records while I do this?"
As Kenta reenters his mind, Kenji is actually unconscious, though his mind is completely filled with those nightmares that leaked out previously. His body is completely able to be manipulated by now, and there is no sign of the seal that appeared before Kenta the previous time. It looks like it will take some time wading through these messed up 'worlds' within Kenji's mind to find it again, as if someone, an outside source, was hiding it away. The only constant within these worlds is that the moon is bright red and looks exactly like the Uchiha sharingan. For now, Kenji's body behaves as the medic-nin awaits perhaps some more answers within the files of the boy's medical records.
With a little effort Konsho gets the door unlocked and opened and goes to deliver Kenta's message while Hige goes through a few drawers before finding what he's looking for. He pulls out a roll of bandaging and goes back to Kenji, not asking or waiting before he wraps the bandaging around Kenji's head a few times, blindfolding him. He ties that off, leaving it there. "I could've told you it wasn't /entirely/ my fault either," Hige says, managing a soft chuckle to try and help lighten the mood a tad. Just a tad. "So someone placed two seals on him? That seems a bit odd, doesn't it?" He goes back to poking around the drawers, looking for something to at least tie Kenji's hands down with. Konsho returns fairly quickly, practically shoving the nurse into the room with the files.
Kenta sighs and opens his eyes. "Ok, that didn't work very well. Ummm… I have a feeling that this case is going to take a -lot- more time to figure out. There's some very high level seal and mind manipulations going on here. That means I have to step carefully and be very thorough to tease out all the details. My gut feeling is that the person or people that did this had a good grasp of seals, Uchiha genjutsu and maybe even Yamanaka hidenjutsu." He frowns down at Kenji, but looks up when Konsho returns with the nurse. The medic-nin holds out a hand to the woman. "Thanks. I'll take that," he says. It should be reassuring that the files really were requested by a senior medic at the hospital. She's not being kidnapped by Inuzuka trying to steal patient files.
"I don't think he's going anywhere anytime soon," Hige says as he continues to dig around. When the nurse arrives he looks up at her and smiles sweetly. "Can you show me where the bindings are held for the crazy patients? They don't get much crazier than this one." He would follow her to that and return to bind Kenji's hands to the cot. That way he can't remove the blindfold. There was no way he was going to leave Kenji alone with Kenta if he wasn't sure that he couldn't do anything. "Sounds like an interesting case."
Kenta's reading through Kenji's file when Hige returns. There's a frown on his face that's deeper than most that ever land there. "Umm… looks like there's a mention of the broken seal in here. It's a suppression seal that was placed due to the impact of extreme nightmares on his mental and physical wellbeing. Nothing about that second seal. I wonder if the second one have a secondary function of causing the nightmares." Kenta flips the file closed. "This doesn't sound good. These nightmares will start having a terrible toll on Kenji again if it continues. Umm… even worse than now. I mean, he's catatonic. The file doesn't give enough details. Classified operation. We do have a name now." The medic-nin looks down at Kenji. "We have a new starting point."
